CHAPTER XX
HOSPITALITY AS A DUTY
IF ours were a perfect state of society, constructed on the Golden Rule, animated and guided throughout by unselfish love for friend and neighbor, and charity for the needy, there would be no propriety in writing this chapter. Home, domestic comfort and happiness being our best earthly possessions, we would be eagerly willing to share them with others.
As society is constructed under a state of artificial civilization, and as our homes are kept and our households are run, the element of duty must interfere, or hospitality would become a lost art. Even where the spirit of this—one of the most venerable of virtues—is not wanting, conscience is called in to regulate the manner and the seasons in which it should be exercised.
As a corner-stone, assume, once for all, that a binding obligation rests on you to visit, and to receive visits, and to entertain friends, acquaintances and strangers in a style consistent with your means, at such times as may be consistent with more serious engagements. Having once issued an invitation, you are sacredly bound on the day named to give yourself completely to your guests. To invite people to dinner and then ask them to leave early in order that one may accept an invitation that one has received in the meantime, would seem impossible to a woman of right instincts—but it has been done, at least by women of social prominence.
RETURNING COURTESIES
It may sound harsh to assert that you have no right to accept hospitality for which you can never make any return in kind. The principle is, nevertheless, sound to the core.
Those who read the newspapers forty years ago will recall a characteristic incident in the early life of Colonel Ellsworth, the brilliant young lawyer who was one of the first notable victims of the Civil War. His struggles to gain a foothold in his profession were attended by many hardships and humiliating privations. Once, finding the man he was looking for on a matter of business, in a restaurant, he was invited to partake of the luncheon to which his acquaintance was just sitting down. Ellsworth was ravenously hungry, almost starving, in fact, but he declined courteously but firmly, asking permission to talk over the business that had brought him thither, while the other went on with the meal.
The brave young fellow, in telling the story in after years, confessed that he suffered positive agony at the sight and smell of the tempting food.
A RECIPROCATING SPIRIT
“I could not, in honor, accept hospitality I could not reciprocate,” was his simple explanation of his refusal. “I might starve, I could not sponge!”